I finally got around to posting my list of R gripes on a blog at http://ivo-welch.blogspot.com/2012/04/r-annoyances-and-gripes.html . I did put in some time, but I do not expect anyone to read it. it was more for myself. still, if you are curious, I would love to hear where I got it wrong and where I got it right. regards, /iaw ---- Ivo Welch (ivo.welch at gmail.com)
On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 8:35 AM, ivo welch <ivo.welch at gmail.com> wrote:
"what is the problem you are trying to solve?"
elegance, ease, and readability in my programs.
R has morphed from a data manipulation, graphics, and stats program
into my mainstay programming language. ?most of this has been a huge
gain. ?the addition of the parallel package was another recent big
gain for me.
some of it is a loss. ?I particularly lament the fact that I cannot
turn off [silent] recycling (causing great hair loss on my end at
various occasions), no applicable error line number output on error
messages; and some syntax that could be nicer. ? ?this was a prime
example of the latter.
regards, /iaw
[and then there are some impossible syntax desires, like in-string
substitution. ?would it not be nice if I could write f("use $a\n")
instead of f(paste("use", a, "\n", sep="")) ?]
[some of my loss relates to my lack of understanding of some of the
magic behind R. ?I just stumbled onto the fact that I can obtain loess
x variables with l$x; until then, I was trying to figure out how to
construct names and paste to match what unlist told me. ? worse, I
have spotty memory. ?you guys reading and helping out people like me,
plus the google archives here, are angels. ?without your help, I could
not use R.]
----
Ivo Welch (ivo.welch at gmail.com)